ARCHAIC ATHENS

Miscellaneous Texts, I

Philochoros [FGrH 328] F 94: ( = Strabo IX. 1.20)

According to Philochoros, when the country was being devastated, both from the sea by the Carians and from the land by the Boeotians, who were called Aonas, Kekrops first settled the multitude in twelve poleis, the names of which were: Kekropia, Tetrapolis, (Tetrakomoi), Epakria, Dekeleia, Eleusis, Aphidna (also called Aphidnai, in the plural), Thorikos, Brauron, Kytheros, Sphettos, Kephisia. And at a later time Theseus is said to have united the twelve into one polis, the present one.

Philochoros [FGrH 328] F 35a: ( = Photios & Suda, s.v. orgeones)

orgeones: Those who perform orgiastic rites for their own privately erected gods; orgiazein means to carry out the orgia of the gods, that is to say, mysteries and nomima ['customary usages']. Plato in the Laws X (910b) . . . Seleukos in his Hypomnemata of Solon's Axones [Seleukos FGrH #341 F1] says that they are called orgeones who have gatherings (synodous) around certain heroes or gods; they are already employing a metaphor and so terming the hierea of the gods. Indeed, Antimachos in his Lydia . . . and Aeschylos in the Mysians [F 144 Nauck] . . . Philochoros has also written on the subject of orgeones, that the phratores are required to receive both the orgeones and the homogalaktes, whom we call gennetai.

Philochoros [FGrH 328] F 35b:

gennetai: those having a share in the same genos: All of the citizens are divided up according to parts. The first and largest division is called the phyle; each phyle is divided up into three parts and each part of these is called trittys and phratry; and in turn each of the phratries is divided up into thirty gené, from which the hierosynai appointed to each of them are appointed by lot. The word occurs in the texts of many of the orators, as, for example, Deomsthenes in his Appeal against Eubouleides (LVII. 23; 67), Isocrates, in his speech On the kleros of Apollodoros (VII. 1; 13): both call the syngeneis ["relatives"] gennetai. However, the syngeneis are not the equivalent of the gennetai ex haimatos ["those related by the same bloodline"] as well as the ek tou autou genous ["those related by virtue of belonging to the same genos], but those are denoted [by gennetai] who had been assigned ex arches to the so-called thirty gene. Philochoros says in Book IV of his Atthis that "formerly they were called homogalaktes whom now they call gennetai."

Krateros [FGrH 324] F4: (Harpokration & Suda, s.v. nautodikai):

Lysias in his speech Against Alkibiades (XVII. 5; 8), if the speech is genuine: the nautodikai was an arché at Athens. Specifically, Krateros in Book IV of his Psephismata says, "If someone whose two parents are non-Athenians applies for admission to a phratry, any Athenian who wishes to do so may prosecute him; he has leave to prosecute on the last day of the month in the presence of the nautodikai." Aristophanes in his Daitales: "I intend to shove in my oar and denounce the xenos before the nautodikai." (Pollux VIII. 126): The nautodikai were those officials who handled cases dealing with xenia. They were referred to as hybristodikai, if you can believe Krateros who wrote the Psephismata, when they did not want to introduce a prosecution. Such a thing prevailed in Sicily."

Thucydides II. 15:

[speaking of the removal of the farmers into the city. See Gomme, Commentary on Thucydides II, pp. 47-61.]

And this kind of life had been the characteristic of the Athenians, more than of any other Hellenes, from the very earliest times. For in the time of Kekrops and the earliest kings down to Theseus Attika had been divided into separate towns, each with its own town hall [prytaneion] and magistrates [archontes], and so long as they had nothing to fear they did not come together to consult with the king, but separately administered their own affairs and took counsel [epiliteuon kai ebouleuonto] for themselves. Sometimes they even made war upon the king, as, for example, the Eleusinians with Eumolpos did with Erechtheus. But when Theseus became king and proved himself a powerful as well as a prudent ruler, he not only reorganized the country in other respects, but abolished the councils and magistracies of the minor towns and brought all their inhabitants into union with what is now the City, establishing a single bouleuterion and prytaneion, and compelled them, while continuing to occupy each his own lands as before, to use Athens as the sole capital. This became a great city, since all were now paying their taxes to it, and was such when Theseus handed it down to his successors. And from his time even to this day the Athenians have celebrated at the public expense a festival called Synoikia in honor of the Goddess.

Suda (ed. T. Gasiford 1853, p. 1455-56) s.v. Drakon:

Drakon: an Athenian legislator. This man, when he was being acclaimed in the theater of Aegina because of the laws he had enacted with the joyful acclamations of the Aeginetans, when many a petasos and chiton and himation had been thrown, he was suffocated to death; and he was buried in the very theater itself. He lived at the time of the Seven Sages, or rather he was more ancient. For as an old man in the 39th Olympiad [624/21 B.C.] he enacted laws for the Athenians. he wrote the Hypothekai , 3,000 lines.